 Wonderful. Good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening to everyone joining from around the world. My name is Brooke Atwell. I'm the associate director for the Nature Conservancy's Resilient Watershed Program and I'm going to be your moderator today for this co-hosted Nature Conservancy and IWA webinar on waterproof, which is a rapid return on investment tool for nature-based solutions. Next slide. So just a few kind of housekeeping things at the top. This webinar will be recorded if it's actually being recorded right now and so it'll be made available on demand on the IWA Connect Plus platform. Just a disclaimer, the speakers are responsible for securing their copyright permissions for anything that we present today and then of course any opinions, hypotheses, conclusions, recommendations that we present today are the sole responsibility of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect IWA's opinion. Next slide. To engage with us today, please use the chat box function for just general requests and for some of our interactive activities. And then please use the Q&A box of just two down from that to send questions to the panelists and we'll try to address those during the discussion portion of today's webinar and in some of the post-webinar materials if we don't get to your questions. Note that you are muted and we cannot respond to your raised hand, so if you have any questions, comments, or concerns, please do drop them in the Q&A box. Next slide. This is our agenda today, so I've already started kicking this off. We'll have a poll in just a few moments and then Kari Biggerstahl will introduce us to nature-based solutions and how to account for their benefits, followed by colors for helis who is driving this presentation. He will give us a conceptual overview of the waterproof tool. We'll have a second poll and then that will be followed by a live demonstration and a Q&A. Briefly, we'll close with some final remarks and conclusions at the end if we have a moment. So I've already introduced myself. During my day job, I'm the associate director for resilient watersheds for the nature conservancy and today I'll be moderating this webinar. We are also joined today by my two wonderful colleagues, Kari Biggerstahl who is the director of water security science at the nature conservancy and colors for helis who is the integrated water resource management program leader for the nature conservancy in Colombia. All right, we're going to kick off the first poll and this is really just to gauge your familiarity with nature-based solutions. So are you very familiar? You know, you're already integrating MBS into your programs. Are you somewhat familiar? So you're exploring integration of nature-based solutions into the programs but maybe have not yet integrated it or are you maybe familiar but have not really considered how MBS could be helpful for your particular organization or your company. And then the last but certainly not least is whether or not the term is relatively new to you or your organization and company. This will help Kari Biggerstahl who is our first speaker for today kind of tailor some of her comments to match the group's familiarity with nature-based solutions. So I suspect we will probably have quite a bit of spread around this question so Kari I'm not so sure how helpful that will be for you. We'll give everyone just a few more moments to respond before we close. So most of very familiar but as expected there's quite a spread. So Kari you have a bit of a difficult job of trying to address those. Next slide, Carlos. Great. So I'm going to hand it over to my colleague Kari Biggerstahl who as I mentioned is the Director of Water Security Science at the Nature Conservancy where she is responsible for strategically strengthening and advancing science behind the issues of water protection and water scarcity strategies. Over the last 20 years or so Kari has brought her technical skills and partnership building to advance collective action in dozens of watersheds around the world through integrated water resource management, agricultural best management practices and development of sustainable funding mechanisms. Great. Thanks so much, Brooke. Great. So I'm very happy to be here with all of you today and excited to share with you all alongside Carlos and Brooke about our waterproof platform. And as Brooke mentioned my role in this webinar is just to offer a brief introduction to nature-based solutions to make sure we're all sort of in the same playing field. We saw that spread across the familiarity of nature-based solutions so I won't spend a lot of time on this introduction but I wanted to just offer our perspectives on nature-based solutions and lead us into the waterproof presentation with a strong foundation of what they are and how we think about the benefits of these interventions. So I just wanted to kick off with the definition that we use and many other of our partners use. There are several definitions out there around nature-based solutions and many of them are quite similar but have some small nuances. And one of the most commonly quoted and cited definitions is the IUCN definition for nature-based solutions and then more recently is UN Environmental Assembly definition from 2022 built upon that definition and is quickly becoming relatively well accepted in the community. So I just wanted to highlight a couple of the points of this definition. I know it's a little bit long and it's trying to capture everything in sort of one sentence. But what's clear is that nature-based solutions describe actions and that fall into a number of categories. Actions around protecting, conserving, restoring, sustainably using and managing natural ecosystems. And those ecosystems are across all of the different types of terrains, terrestrial, freshwater, coastal and marine. And these actions are aiming to address big challenges that we have around social, economic and environmental challenges effectively and adaptively. And really importantly, nature-based solutions can also provide other kinds of benefits in addition to the targeted challenge that they're primarily being implemented to effect. So for example, they could be human well-being benefits, ecosystem service and resilience and biodiversity benefits. And I'll talk about those a little bit more in a couple of slides. So this is just a starting point for all of us to understand what are we talking about when we're talking about nature-based solutions or NBS. And diving a little bit deeper, we, this chart here provides a little bit more information about those categories of nature-based solutions and a little bit more specific list of those potential actions. So this categorization is something that TNC and many of our partners use was originally founded on a categorization that University of Oxford had developed. So it's around those different kinds of action categories. So for example, under protection, we have targeted habitat protection under restoration. We have a number of types of actions. For example, wetland restoration or floodplain restoration, revegetation. Under management, this is really focused more on working lands. So this includes agricultural best management practices, ranching best management practices, and also fire management. And then under created habitat, this could include a number of actions, but some examples are artificial wetlands or a number of actions in urban systems such as sustainable urban drainage systems. And as we look at this chart, we can begin to see that these different nature-based solutions can address water security issues from water availability to flood risks to water quality issues. In varying degrees, and there's varying degrees of cases out there in terms of evidence and the strength of the ability of these different nature-based solutions to address these challenges. And then also, we're starting to see information around the co-benefits of these different actions, which I'll talk a little bit more about. But this is just an introduction to what we're actually talking about here. What are nature-based solutions? What do they actually look like on the ground in order to impact these different kinds of water security issues? Okay, next slide. So nature-based solutions is something that the Nature Conservancy has been working on for quite a long time now. And TNC and its partners believe that nature-based solutions have the potential to shift the water management paradigm. So scaling up the integration of nature-based solutions in how we manage our lands and waters, including on how we plan and deliver on water supply for cities and other large water users, allows us to take a more systemic view. And this approach helps us sustain or create healthy watersheds where water security needs are being met such as for water supply for cities and other large water users alongside other benefits to people in nature. And this is just an example of sort of the vision that we have for the world. We're moving from watersheds that are managed one challenge at a time to moving towards healthy watersheds where nature-based solutions are integrated alongside other types of gray solutions in order to meet water security challenges and deliver on a number of other benefits. Next slide. So, as I mentioned, nature-based solutions, one of the huge benefits of nature-based solutions is that they have the potential to deliver on not only primary benefit that they're being implemented for around water security, water quality, or water quantity issues, but also a suite of other types of benefits. One type of benefit is potential benefit is climate change mitigation, where the activities can help avoid greenhouse gas emissions or increase carbon sequestration. Nature-based solutions can also help communities adapt to climate change through mitigation of climate change impacts and building a resilience in communities. There are also a whole suite of human health and well-being benefits that nature-based solutions can help support from clean air to food security and even physical and mental health. And then finally, because nature-based solutions are about protecting, restoring, and better managing our natural resources, our ecosystems, there's a huge potential to deliver on biodiversity conservation by improving or protecting the status of different terrestrial and freshwater species and the ecosystems in which they live. Next slide. So, in terms of how you start to think about which kinds of benefits a nature-based solution could deliver on, TNC and its partners have worked over the last few years on developing an approach to identify an account for these benefits. And we captured this in a guide and an online tool that we have available through the CEO Water Mandates website, which is the organization that led this work alongside TNC, LimnoTac, and then on. And the guide was published in 2021, has been recently updated and provides that guidance on how to use this approach to identify nature-based solutions and then begin to account for those benefits. And this document also provides information on the indicators you could use and the calculation methods and synthesizes many case studies and best practices. And then we also developed alongside this guide, we developed an online tool which makes it really easy to input a nature-based solution and understand what kinds of benefits that might bring about and begin to account for those benefits. Or if you're considering nature-based solutions in a certain context and you're looking for different kinds of benefits, it can help suggest as particular nature-based solutions that can help deliver on that. So I encourage you to check out this site and the work that we've been doing alongside partners on the benefit accounting for nature-based solutions for watersheds. So before I hand off to my colleague Carlos to introduce you to Waterproof and provide a live demonstration of the platform, I wanted to leave you with our vision for the world and why we developed Waterproof in the first place. So as I mentioned, we see the potential for nature-based solutions to help deliver on water security for watersheds across the globe in a cost-effective way and create a number of other benefits for people and for nature. So for example, several years ago we published a report called Beyond the Source, but we looked at what is the potential for nature-based solutions to deliver on water security benefits to large water users around the world. And what we found was that four out of five cities can improve their water quality through investments in nature-based solutions in upstream watersheds. So there is a huge potential out there for nature-based solutions to play a really big role here. And because of that, we have this belief that nature-based solutions is really important for ongoing water security today and into the future, especially in the light of climate change. And so we have led or partnered over 40 water funds or watershed investment programs that create programs for investment in nature-based solutions at scale, including sustainable funding and governance mechanisms for the planning for the implementation and management of nature-based solutions for water security. And as we've done this over the last couple of decades, we've identified some of the top obstacles for further scaling of nature-based solutions for water. And one of these is, a couple of these are capacity and knowledge around building these programs, which we are addressing at an accelerating pace through our Nature for Water Facility, which is sort of a pseudo-consulting group that offers pro bono and fee-for-service support. And we also realized that if we could make the pre-visibility step of this nature-based solution program development much faster and cheaper, it could help move the program development steps more quickly. And we could get to implementation of nature-based solutions in many more watersheds at a faster pace and by reducing that initial investment needed to just test our nature-based solutions, a cost-effective strategy for water security in a given watershed. So we developed a waterproof to reduce the cost of conducting an NBS portfolio return on investment assessment to pretty much zero and reduce the time from months to minutes. And Carlos will tell you more about that in his presentation, but I just wanted to kind of lay this foundation of nature-based solutions, let you know why we're so invested in this and how we're trying to scale this up and why we developed waterproof as part of this strategy. So I'll leave you all here and move on to Carlos' presentation, but I'll be back for the question-and-answer session later in this webinar. Thank you. Thank you very much, Terry. In this presentation, I will give a general introduction to waterproof. First, we talk about how we design waterproof and how we conceptualize the system. And later, as we go to the system directly to do a small demonstration of its use. It is a short time, so I will not be able to go into specific details, but as we will see in the presentation, the whole system is fully documented and the details can be found in the reports and in the paper that we have published. So, waterproof has been developed by the Nature Conservancy with the idea of developing a high-level ROI assessment tool designed to provide stakeholders interested in nature-based solutions with a pre-visibility indicative assessment regarding MBS potential. Waterproof is a global tool that includes the entire planet. The first version has a special emphasis on the analysis of return on investment in infrastructure of drinking water supply systems, but waterproof is flexible to incorporate other types of infrastructure. Conceptually, the platform has several modules that allow the user to locate a city, define and configure water intakes, select or create new nature-based solutions, configure treatment plans, or customize analysis infrastructure, define costs and create case studies, consult, compare, download, and share results. Although the system can potentially support different models and analysis tools, for version 1.0, we have incorporated virtualized versions of RIOs, Invest, and ROI models to be running the cloud. We want to highlight that waterproof is not just a viewer, it is a simulation tool that uses cloud computing to simulate scenarios. And just to bring in some context about the challenge, watersheds are being degraded around the world with dire impacts on water security, and nature-based solutions can preserve or restore degraded watersheds. However, today there is a lack of sufficient uptake and investment, and this is in part due to the complexity and time required to demonstrate an MBS portfolio's positive return on investment for water security outcomes. This is an important challenge, and it is also a significant first step required for unlocking at the scale of funding commitments by public and private sectors. So, we have developed waterproof as a solution at the pre-disability level, considering it to be fast, it rapidly develops a pre-disability understanding for how MBS can generate water security outcomes. Compiling, it presents clear analytics to promote the stakeholders' conversations. It is customizable, the platform offers flexibility to define cost elements and parameters to approximate local conditions. It is also multi-currency, users can define costs in any currency and can combine currencies for their analysis. Waterproof updates the exchange rates each morning to use this information in calculations and currency exchanges. And finally, waterproof is completely free. At the conceptual level, waterproof uses global databases. We have conducted an extensive review of different global information sources, and we have evaluated their suitability for the purposes of the analysis. This information review has been documented and can be consulted as part of the system documentation. Version 1.0 of waterproof uses virtualized versions for execution in a web environment of Rios and Inves models to software developed by the Natural Capital Project and with Stanford University. And we use these models for the definition of MBS portfolios and estimation of benefits in ecosystem services. This first version of the platform includes the models for annual water yield, seasonal water yield, sediment delivery ratio, nutrient delivery ratio, and carbon storage and sequestration. Waterproof runs the models for a business-as-usual scenario and for a nature-based solution implementation scenario. And using the results of the modeling, waterproof calculates the savings or benefits using cost functions. The system has preloaded cost functions that describe the operation and maintenance costs of the analysis infrastructure elements, but the user can edit these cost functions or create their own cost functions. Finally, the system calculates all the costs associated with the implementation of the portfolio of nature-based solutions and compares them with the benefits to estimate the return on investment. So we have integrated this analysis and calculation process to facilitate the calculation in a user-friendly platform that allows the user to perform the analysis in a simple way, including the possibility that the user can perform their analysis on their seven different climate scenarios, a historical climate scenario, and six climate change scenarios, three scenarios RCP 4.5, and three scenarios RCP 8.5. Waterproof is a fully documented system. It is also a peer-reviewed tool. We have produced scientific publications that describe in detail all the information and the methods that waterproof uses for analysis. We invite you all to consult this open access paper for more information and to learn all the technical details of the system. So now I will present some of the most important features of waterproof, its capabilities and conceptualization. And I would like to point out that waterproof is a tool designed for pre-disability analysis and no time it is intended to replace detailed analysis and this is very important for us. It is a tool that uses global databases and global information and this indicates that its scope is at the pre-disability level to save time in the initial process of evaluating portfolios of nature-based solutions, but it does not replace detailed analysis. And I would like to start by pointing out that we wanted waterproof to be a fully documented and transparent system for users. This is not only in the effort of the paper we have published that also in the system we have included a section that we have called Knowledge Bank. So on the waterproof landing page users can access this Knowledge Bank section to have access to all the technical information of the system. In this presentation I will not be able to go into all the details of the system and the design elements, but you can access this section and consult all the information in detail. In this section there are general knowledge articles associated with nature-based solutions, ecosystem services, and water security, but also detailed technical information about the mathematical modeling packages we have implemented in the system or the explanation of the cost functions we have configured for the system. So just mentioning that this section in the system is available, we have documented everything that we have developed for the system. So it is quickly and transparently accessible from the section of the system and everyone is invited to access it. Version 1.0 of waterproof uses versions for execution in a web environment using cloud computing of invest and arrears, modeling software developed by the Natural Capital Project and Stanford University. Waterproof allows you to simulate with invest ecosystem services associated with annual water yield, seasonal water yield, sediment delivery ratio, nutrient delivery ratio, and carbon storage and sequestration. So I am going to present very briefly what these two modeling tools are, reuse and invest. And I'm going to start with reuse. Reuse is a software tool developed by the Natural Capital Project for prioritization that allows for identification of sites where certain activities can produce the greatest benefit for people in nature at the lowest cost. The prioritization logic behind reuse involves the possibility of carrying out a series of activities in a watershed which somehow generate changes in the landscape or transitions. The transitions that can be considered by reuse are keep native vegetation, this transition focuses on conserving native vegetation that will likely be lost. Revegetation when assisted, this transition refers to the revitalization of vegetation on the graded or bare areas without active interventions. Revegetation assisted represents the revitalization of vegetation on the graded or bare areas through active interventions, for example, reforestation. Agricultural vegetation management represents increases in the structure, coverage, or density of crops. The other transition is ditching, consists of improving water infiltration and reducing the transport of sediments and nutrients in agricultural or degraded lands. Fertilizer management is related to any activity that changes the way of applying fertilizers in crops or pastures. And finally, pasture management reflects changes in the management practices of pastures, such as silver pastoral systems. So, reuse is divided into two parts, one where it performs the identification of investment portfolios and another where it generates land cover changes associated with the portfolio. So, in the portfolio generation module, Rios performs a series of analysis on the biophysical components to determine the most cost effective set of NBS that allows to achieve several objectives in the basin. Rios can integrate six different objectives, erosion control for drinking water quality, erosion control for reservoir maintenance, nutrient retention, referred to nitrogen and phosphorus, flood mitigation, groundwater recharge, enhancement, and dry season baseload. And on the other hand, the portfolio translator module allows generating scenarios that reflect the future state of the watershed if the portfolio is implemented. This module uses the portfolios to develop maps of land cover and the associated biophysical parameter tables required to run NBS models. So, Rios and INVEST are connected and INVEST is the integrated valuation of ecosystem services and trade-offs. It's a family of tools for quantifying the values of nature of natural capital in clear, credible and practical ways. The interesting thing about INVEST models is that they have low information requirements compared to more complex tools, but still these models can identify areas where investment can improve ecosystem services. Currently, waterproof integrate five INVEST models to evaluate the benefits of nature-based solutions. And as I mentioned before, those are annual water gill, seasonal water gill, sediment delivery ratio, nutrient delivery ratio, and the carbon storage and registration. So, the INVEST models incorporated in waterproof are specially distributed and temporarily aggregated. They represent annual average. The models receive inputs in raster vector and text formats corresponding to the physical variables necessary for modeling. In addition, the model can generate aggregations in a specific area, for example, invasions for which it uses vector files. Internally, each model has a mathematical structure that allows us to represent the variables of interest, such as water gill or sediment delivery ratio. And you can find a detailed description of each of these natural models on the website of the Natural Capital Project at Stanford University. So, all the input global spatial databases for Rios and INVEST have been organized and stored in post-EIS for waterproof. Similarly, global alphanumeric databases have also been generated and stored in Postgres. For waterproof, there is also detailed documentation of these databases. The output databases, spatial alphanumeric, have been configured under a combined Postgres and PostGIS scheme. Additionally, for the Rios and INVEST executions, we are required to configure biophysical tables and parameter tables. We have 56 of these tables defined according to the macro regions that come from a high-reshift level 2 exercises. And these tables and parameters are already incorporated into the database scheme with Postgres and PostGIS. Additionally, we have worked on parameter adjustment for different basings in the world. We define this process as an initial sensitivity and parametric coherence scan for INVEST models. For these, we have used information available from the James Glory database. And we have identified global information on discharge, sediments, nitrogen concentration and phosphorus concentration in different basings around the world. And for the sensitivity and parametric coherence analysis, we have carried out Monte Carlo simulations with a lightning, hypercube sampling method and with information added in these 56 macro regions defined by the level 2 of information from high reshifts. And with this information, we have explored the behavior of the parameters and we have defined the parametrization of the models. This is a global exercise and this parametric coherence analysis should be understood only as an initial approximation that allow us to show to the user the predictive potential of the modeling packages. But we recognize that it is carried out with limited information for the analysis. So, for example, we can explore the behavior of the annual water yield. This is, for example, an analysis for a region in Africa. This analysis is fully documented and it is based on a sample comparison between the observed and modulated data. In the graph on the left, if all the points are aligned at 45 degrees, it means that the simulation represents exactly the observed data. Of course, there are errors in the representation that, for example, in this case, the simulation is acceptable and the user can establish in some way the level of reliability for the information that is generated from the mathematical model. We also include doti plots in relation to an objective function. In this case, it is a mean absolute error to see the behavior of the parameters and their response of the model. So, now we will see some elements included in waterproof and drinking water supply systems. We have carried out that classification of infrastructure in the water intakes and treatment of water. We identified that the user may have 15 infrastructure elements to define their water intake and treatment. The elements that the user has available are those that appear on the slide. A user can build the water intake system through a drag and drop interface and simply connect the elements to describe the water intake. On the other hand, we have carried out a typification of drinking water treatment plants. For this, we have combined mainly two criteria, water quality in the river and regulations for the quality of drinking water that is required to be delivered to users classified by country. With these two things, we build a typification of plants. All this process and analysis is documented in this report. It is an extensive review of different sources of information available, mainly a literary view to be able to adopt the classification criteria. Very quickly for the classification of water in the river based on the concentration of sediments nitrogen and phosphorus. We define four categories of water quality that have been named with letters category ADC and D. We also carried out the normative characterization mainly from the territory view by country to identify the types of drinking water quality required. We also define four categories that this time we define it with numbers category 123 and four. And well, our classification of treatment plants is then a combination between the quality of water at the source in the river and the quality of drinking water in accordance with the regulations of each country. We then define seven different types of plants that go from plant A to plant G. In this way, it is possible to suggest to a user and expected plant type. Conceptually for the system we have defined a generic treatment plant that includes all the unit processes that are commonly used in the world. In this case, we have 12 unit drinking water treatment processes that include processes such as slow mixing preparation, disinfection, etc. With the typification that we have carried out on this generic scheme, we can suggest to the user which of these unitary processes are expected to be active or inactive in the treatment line. We do this only as a guide, since the user can turn on or turn off the processes that he considers according to his needs. In this case on the slide, I'm presenting the unit processes in blue, which according to the typification it is suggested to consider active in the plant for the analysis. Inactive unit processes are indicated in gray. On this slide that typical plant configurations ABC and D. And on this slide plants EF and G configurations. This is just suggested information for a user, but it is flexible in the sense that the user can again turn on or turn off unit treatment processes, according to their needs. Finally, we will see a little about the handling of cost functions in waterproof. The cost function is a mathematical expression that describes the cost of operation and maintenance of infrastructure as a function of flow sediment nitrogen and phosphorus. Building this cost functions has not been easy. It has been a task of great effort and a review of a large amount of available information that is published in reports, papers and documents. In the waterproof section of the Knowledge Bank, you can consult all the information about the cost functions that we have included in the system, including the references from which the information was taken. From this exercise we have been able to build functions to describe the costs in the different infrastructure elements that are sensitive to the variables of interest, such as flows, sediment nitrogen and phosphorus. Some examples of cost functions are shown on the slide. Each infrastructure element in the system has an associated cost function preloaded based on the literature review we have done. But users can modify the cost functions or create new cost functions according to their knowledge to approximate local conditions. Just to highlight that waterproof is fully customizable for this purpose. So this is a very, very general conceptual view of the system. Waterproof version 1.0 is available at water-proof.org. And now I think, Brooke, we are going to have our second poll before we do the demo directly on the system, right? Yes, that's correct Carlos. Great. So we'll kick off our second poll really quickly here while Carlos switches his screen over to be able to show you an actual demonstration of the waterproof tool on the platform. I know some of you were asking about that in the Q&A function, so don't worry, it's coming. But our second poll is around whether or not you think waterproof could be something valuable for your organization or company. Yes, definitely you're interested in applying it to your work. You think so, but you might need some more information. You're unsure or no, this doesn't necessarily seem relevant for your organization or company. We'll give you a few moments to answer this question. But why we're essentially asking is, you know, we're always looking to improve on the platform and make this as useful as possible for practitioners who are in this space. And even investors who are considering using waterproof as sort of a first go at whether or not they should continue to explore a little bit more. So this could help us potentially iterate and come up with new ways that we might try to adapt waterproof to meet the needs of the sector in reality. So just a few more moments and then we will close the poll. And please do keep your questions coming in. Carrie and I, Carlos have been answering behind the scenes, but we're flagging a few that we'd like to bring forward to discussion. All right, closing down the poll. Great. All right. Generally, generally positive. Carlos, I'm going to hand it back over to you to give us a full demonstration. I'll go directly to the to the waterproof with website. The idea is to make a small demonstration of the system so that you can see how to use it and how it works. Again, the tool we have developed is completely web based uses cloud computing to run mathematical models for the definition of cost effective portfolios of nature based solutions and the analysis of benefits in ecosystem services for the estimation of return investment. And you can access the tool to the through the website. Water dash proof.org. So, this is waterproof landing page. In the first part, there is a general explanation of the system that the user on what waterproof is what a case study is. The global databases that we have incorporated in the system, an example that can be consulted and some additional orientations for users. In this other section, we just want to highlight some of the waterproof features. As I mentioned before, fast compiling free and customizable. And as I mentioned before, it is important to know that waterproof has preloaded databases of modeling parameters and cost functions for drinking water treatment systems. But everything in the system is customizable. The system allows users to modify modeling parameters will include the specific cost functions that a user wishes to analyze. We have also included a brief explanation of the steps to use the system and also a section that presents how to move forward for the implementation of nature based solutions that we have called take action. And finally, as I said before, the system is fully documented. We have provided a knowledge bank that users can consult to understand the models databases equations and parameters that the system uses for analysis. It is completely open information part of our interest with the system that it is a transparent tool for the users and for this reason, we have made all the information available for consultation. So, in this demonstration, I will set up a case study for a drinking water supply system. And for this, we click on a star now, at the top of the web page doesn't mean it is loading, but I'm not sure if something is happening with the server. So, let me try to look at it again. Okay, so here, the idea is that we can select a city in the world. For this example, I'm just going to go to Caramanga. In Colombia, where we are going to have this short demonstration, right. And you can see here that in the, in the, in the, in the web page. We can see there are some cases study that we're already created by other users. Just to show into the system, the, the, the, the cases studies that they're trying to present, right. But a case study actually is not more like the combination between two different things that is the water intake and the, and the, and the treatment plan with a preset of parameters of financial components to analyze in the, in the system. So the first thing that we have to, to, to create at this moment is to go into the water intakes and look at the different kind of analysis that we can create for the water intake, right. So, I'm going to go into here. Well, first, I'm going to sign in into the system. You should see it like a screen that says case studies right. Yes. Okay. Okay. Okay, that's it. So here, I'm going to, I'm going to just go into system again. This is like the case studies web page, right. I'm going to do it again because I think you were not saying. So if I click here and start now, you can select the city in the world where you can associate the, the case study that you're going to develop, right. So, for example, here in the city of book at a manga, you can go here and you will see in the system, like different cases studies that other users or myself are created and you can share your case studies. And as I was saying, a case study is nothing more than the combination between the, the water intake configuration that you water treatment plan configuration and a set of parameters for the financial components analysis, right. So here in the water intake, for example, there's the first step, if several drinking water treatment plans. So I'm going to show just one to look at the different kind of information that we have here. So in the system when you create a water intake. You can define a name, for example, for the, for the water intake. You can incorporate a description. Just looking at the descriptions that you want to, to include in the, into the, into the exercise that you are doing. You can define the water source name and you can define the name of the river where you are taking the water. I'm hearing this map using a pin, you can define the exact side of the water intake, right. So when you look at this, you can define this, this side by two ways, you can approximate that into the map, just moving the pin, and to locate the, the, the water intake. The other way to do it is to, to enter the exact coordinates of the system for that, right. For the water intake. Here the system, it process the digital elevation model. And we are having incorporated, like the all the, all the algorithms to analyze the digital elevation model for flow direction flow accumulation and all these things, just to have the, the, just to delineate the watershed. Right. So the system creates this. And the other way to do to, and the next step is just to configure the, the water intake, right. And for this, as I said, it's just a drag and drop process where you can just drag the different elements of the 15 elements that you have incorporated that we have incorporated into the system. You can connect this, this elements using like the different types of connections you can incorporate pipelines, or you can incorporate channels just to have the different kind of of connections between the different elements. The next step is just to have the water demand. So you can incorporate this by filling up table if you know exactly the water demand in a projection of different years. For example, if you know the demand in 30 years of 15 years or, or the time that you want to do the analysis, you can incorporate the initial year extraction the final year extraction. And you can select like different kind of interpolation methods just to fill the, the, the table associated with the different demands by year. Right. In this screen, a user can define if the implementation of the NBS portfolio is going to cover the entire watershed that we are analyzing of it is just like an specific area where you can incorporate the nature based solutions right. We incorporated this feature because sometimes we have found that for some a watershed investment programs, there are some limitations in the kind of areas that we can implement the, the, the information regarding NBS or the implementation of NBS. This is like the way that we can create water intakes. The next step in the system is to create treatment plants, right. And for example, if I look at this one, right. You can see in this exercise that again in this template we need to incorporate the name of the drinking water treatment plant a description is also available, and you need you can associate the water intake that feeds this drinking water treatment plant, right. So for example, it's just one water intake that is associated with the drinking and drinking treatment plant, but of course, the system is flexible if for example for one drinking treatment plant is feed it by two or more water intakes we can incorporate that into the system for the analysis. And in this part the system can analyze the, the, the water quality in the river, and also the requirements by country associated with the, with the drinking water delivery to the users. And the system is going to suggest a pretty configuration of the drinking water treatment plant, right, with all these processes. If a user wants to modify this, it's just a matter just to check, to uncheck this box or check this box, just to incorporate that kind of information, right. For example, here in the drinking water treatment plant. We have incorporated as I said, many different kind of technologies, for example in this kind of sedimentation we can incorporate conventional settler hybrid settlers as large blanket counters, etc. But a user can also create new technologies for each of the process, according to the needs of the specific treatment plant. Right. So, in that case, when you create a new technology, for example, you need to also establish all this information about the percent of sediments that are retained, or the percent of nitrogen that are retained or percent of phosphorus retained. But you can also incorporate the cost function that is associated with the operation and maintenance of this right. We have preloaded some of these cost functions into the system. But of course, if you click, for example, here in the edit options, you will be able to edit all these cost functions and to create a new one and to customize your analysis, right. So, this is the part like the water index and treatment plants. But something that is really interesting is that in waterproof, you can also explore and create a native based solutions, right. So, in the section of native based solutions using the, the menu in the upper part. We have created and preloaded five different NBS that we are commonly using in the different exercises that we are developing. We have incorporated forest conservation, passive restoration, active restoration with enrichment techniques, agroforestry and silver pastoral systems, right. So here, the users can use this information to use this kind of native based solutions into the analysis. But of course, they can also edit or create new native based solutions. And when you create a new native based solutions, for example, here, you are going to associate that native based solution with the country that where you are working. And in that case, you need to, well, again, you need to name the native based solution you have to have a description. You can define the currency, as I said, the system is multi currency so you can actually select different kind of currencies to associate with the cost in terms of the of the system of the native based solution that you are developing. There are some biophysical parameters that you need to incorporate into the system. For example, the time required to obtain the maximum benefits in terms of the how many years do you need for your native based solutions to to really develop all the potential in terms of benefits. Or if your native based solution can bring some benefits at the time T equals zero, right. And, well, you can also define if your native based solutions need what the periodecity of maintenance, you need to define for your native based solutions. Of course, you need to define costs, and we have classified this cost in three main components, the implementation costs, the maintenance costs, and the opportunity costs, right. So, yeah, this is like the, like the, like the way to define the, the first components of the nature based solutions. But remember that as I explained before a waterproof uses the real framework for the analysis of the native based solutions. So here you will need to define for the native based solution, like the type of transition that you are going to have for this kind of MBS and you need to associate that with the changes in terms of land use and cover, right. So for example, if I select the, the revegetation and assist that you're going to have like a main land use and covers that are available in the system and to associate the transition in terms of this changes in land use and cover, right. So, at the end, the idea is that you are going to put all these things together in the, in the case study section, right. And in the case study, the idea is that we just couple all the information with the financial components to be able to to have an analysis in waterproof, right. So, for example, here in the case study, we need to define again a name, a name, a description, and we are going to have like two different options for the analysis. One that we, that we have called drinking water treatment plans and is associated with the water intake and drinking water treatment plans, but we have a second option that is the customizable analysis, right. And here the user can define any cost function that he or she can analyze the system of course is not going to have all the detail and of the systems for this version 1.0 is really focused on drinking water treatment systems. But in some way, it's an open source of information where if you know the cost function that they want to analyze, you can input that into the system. But traditionally, we are using version 1.0 waterproof with drinking water treatment plants. And in that case, well, we need to select the water intake source, and we also need to have the drinking water treatment plant for the, for, for the analysis, right. That's the first step. Here, we have incorporated a feature that is that you can define if you want to use carbon market benefits. So in that case, for example, in carbon market, we will need to, to, well, first activate and consider that in the financial component. But we also need to define, for example, the, the benefit in terms of money of the carbon market, right. That's only an option if you don't want to incorporate carbon market, you just have to uncheck this box and just continue with the analysis, right. And with the portfolio objectives. This is also the framework from Rios, where we have seven different kind of objectives that we can optimize in the analysis with Rios erosion control from drinking water quality erosion control for reservoir maintenance. Neutral retention with phosphorus neutral rotation with nitrogen flood mitigation groundwater and recharge enhancement and base flow, right. Something important is that in Rios you can select one or many or one or two or three portfolio objectives. And if you select more than one, Rios has an algorithm just to look at the optimization of all the objectives at the same time. Right. So you can select here one or many. In the modeling parameters, we have incorporated this as a, as a best as a function for advanced users. So here is all the parameterization that we have for all the models that we have incorporated all the inverse models, actually. And as I said, is we wanted to be very transparent in the kind of information that we have incorporated. But for the analysis, if a user wants to look at the different parameters, they can change the parameters if they know better information about the land use and Vancouver that you have there and the parameterization that you have to use. It's open and when you modify this as a advanced user, this is going to change the parameterization in the modeling and you're going to be you're going to see that reflected in your results. In this step, you need to configure like the financial parameters. And here we have incorporated annual platform costs per year as thinking about, for example, in a watershed investment program where you need a staff to do some activities, office costs, travel expenses, equipment, vehicles, overhead, etc. So you can have all this information available to incorporate in your financial analysis. We have also incorporated a transaction costs that can be associated with all the things that you have to do in terms of, for example, conservation agreements and all the legal components of these agreements. So you can incorporate that as a percentage of the of the of the total cost that you are having for implementation and maintenance, for example. And as it is an ROI analysis, we need some financial parameters associated with discount rates. So here, the system preloads some information according to a database from the World Bank. We have here, like, three different kind of this kind of rates, an average discount rate for the country, but also we can have like sensitivity analysis in terms of minimum discount rate and maximum discount rate, right. Again, this is all editable by the user that we have preloaded some information from the database from the World Bank, right. And here in this screen. A user should select the activities that he wants to analyze with the system. Active Reservation Agroforestry for this conservation, passive restoration and super password systems as the ones that we have preloaded into the system. But if a user from this section creates a new NBS, that NBS will be available in this screen just to select that right. So, after the selection of the of the NBS hearing this final screen. We need to establish the analysis time period. For example, in this case that we are seeing is 30 years. We need to establish the currency. For example, in this case, the analysis was made with us dollars and implementation NBS period. Like the period where you are going to implement your native base solutions program. You can also select the climate scenario that you want to use for the analysis. For example, in this case is the historic climate scenario. But as I said, we have incorporated six different climate change scenarios just to look at the system for that possibility, right. And here you need to define also the budget that you are going to have for each of the NBS, and we have incorporated something that we have called Julie flooding budget. And it's in the case that you don't need to force to invest in any specific NBS, right. So, in that case, you can just look at the Julie flooding budget and the system is going to select the most cost efficient NBS to implement in the area. Right. So, after that, when you run the system. You will see, you can access the the results section, right. And here in the results section we have at the beginning a summary of the results. Basically, the estimated ROI with an interpretation. As I said, waterproof is designed for a pre feasibility analysis. So we recommend just to have like the general interpretation of the ROI. In this case, well, we report the number of 1.23 that it means that the nature based solutions portfolio can hire a high opportunity in the area. And here we can also report like the summary of net present values in terms of implementation maintenance opportunity transaction, because of the platform, but also because of the, the, the net present value of the benefits and the total net present value, right. So this is positive. We have found we have incorporated in this section as a result of the, of the, of the, of the, or like a summary of the risks that we have evaluated in the specific area of the watershed. For this we use the global database of aqueduct. And with that database we just overlap the different layers with the watershed that we have defined. And with that, we can have like information regarding what their quantity risk, quality risk, regulatory and reputational risk, and an overall water risk score, right. But it's taken from the aqueduct database. We have a summary of the interventions and budget. Where you can see, for example, what was the actual spent for each of the activities and the total area that was implemented for this activity. And here we incorporated also a summary of the ecosystems, or the estimated change in ecosystem services, regarding the different model that we have implemented so we can have changes in terms of annual water deal base load and sediment delivery ratio, nutrient delivery ratio with nitrogen, phosphorus and carbon storage and sequestration, right, just to look at the effect of this nature based solution program in terms of ecosystem service. We also have an entire section with detailed reports that we invite you just to go into there. We have financial indicators, physical indicators, decision indicators and geographic visualization of the of the of the results that we are obtaining with this analysis. But of course, at this time with the short time that we have, I just want to mention that it is available in the system just to look at the detail component of the element that we have analyzing the system that you can go by yourself and take a look at the other reports, right. To finalize, I think, just to mention that we have incorporated an option to download a PDF report. It is a complete PDF with all the information of the analysis. But we also have incorporated this option here, let's say it's the zip file, where all the results and all the information in the system is just putting one single file to download. And you can see there the raster files, the excellent files, all the information that was generated during the computational process, right, during the calculation process. So yeah, well, just to say that all invited just to go into the system and to take a look at there are some examples that we have made public just to go there and to have a first experience. Yes, I think, Brooke, we can jump to questions. Perfect. Thank you very much Carlos. That was an excellent overview of the waterproof tool and there's lots of interest in the course as well that we preview just in case people need to drop at the top of the hour. But just kind of go through some of these questions that we flag to answer live. The first one is around flooding so sort of the difference between nuisance flooding versus large flooding events. And card this questions for you it's around how nature based solutions can address flood risk from large storm events and what are your suggestions on how to maybe employ nature based solutions. Yeah, it's a great question. We've done a lot of work, looking at which types of water security challenges that nature based solutions can address and where the boundaries of nature based solutions are. And you've hit on one of the one of these questions around flooding so it is, it is true that when we look at the evidence across different cases around the globe that nature based solutions alone are not. It's not the only thing that we need to address catastrophic flooding we need a combination of green and gray infrastructure to address that that kind of catastrophic flooding that you were describing. As you mentioned that more nuisance flooding that kind of recurring, you know, more a more common flooding that happens, you know, every couple of years. Nature based decisions can do a really good job of helping to mitigate those kinds of floods alone. But with many of these solutions when we think about how we're addressing water management issues in watersheds. It is a combination of nature based solutions along with great infrastructure that help us deliver clean, reliable water to two communities to city so that's that's also the case with that flooding so really good question about whether, you know how we consider nature based solutions for different types of flooding and we're actually working on a report that will release in the early fall for North America on looking at these questions of nature based solutions for flooding and drought and where, and the role that nature based nature based play in addressing these challenges, and in the light of, especially in the light of climate change. Great. Thanks, Carrie. And just to clarify, the report is global, but we're releasing it in the North America fall is what Carrie was mentioning. Carlos I'm going to stay on the same vein of flooding and folks are wondering if the model is something that can be modified to also include flood mitigation benefits. Yeah, I mean, as we saw, Rio's incorporates flood production component just to optimize the, the selection of nature based solutions regarding this objective. But yeah just to be clear, the models that we have incorporated are long term models that in some way are limited to represent flood events, right. Because with with flood events you need an event model just to characterize the hydrograph and to have the flood the big flow for for example. These kind of models are not designed for that. But we have made some experiments just using the framework from Rio's to identify this kind of potential advantages to use nature based solutions for flood mitigation. To generate that portfolio in waterproof and to use this portfolio in other kind of modeling approaches to check the benefits in terms of flood mitigation. That could be done using waterproof, but of course recognizing that there is a limitation in terms of flood analysis on the modeling perspective. That clarification. Kari, could you speak to a little bit about how we've used waterproof so far and Carlos please do jump in if you have anything to share, but specifically in respect to kind of the level of trust among the private financial institutions and how they might, you know, view waterproof. Yeah, great question. So, as Carlos mentioned, I think I mentioned in my presentation, the intention of waterproof is to be used at sort of that pre feasibility phase where you're thinking about nature based solutions as part of the solution set for water security and are curious to understand what types of nature based solutions might be most applicable and is there a positive return on investment for nature based solutions for that for that water security outcome. And so the platform is really great for that for that initial assessment of doesn't make sense for us to be considering nature based solutions in this case in from that stage from that output if the if the answer is yes, then we take the next step which is a more in depth study where we'd be using more local data we'd be working alongside local stakeholders to do a really, a really detailed study of that ROI and exactly where the watershed and which which NBS and as part of a kind of broader development and exploration of that program so. But that, having that said, we are already engaging with development banks around training for watershed investment programs for the whole whole process of that development of watershed investment programs and including waterproof as part of that training. So I think the interest from those development banks on using waterproof as part of that pre feasibility stage of the of the process of developing these watershed investment programs. So, so yeah I would say that in order to engage the private finance sector. I think that's a good tool as that kind of first step but I think for for any case where you're actually moving on to program development, you would need that more in depth analysis and business case development, which happens after this sort of waterproof assessment indication of yes, this is worth investing in this is worth spending more time on. So, I hope that answers that question and Brooke feel free to add because I know you work on this quite a bit. The program development side. That's exactly right waterproof is indicative but you will need a more in depth analysis to usually meet the burden of proof that's required from some of these larger financial institutions. Before I move on Carlos anything you would like to share at that point. No, I think it was, it is like it is right. As you said, the scope for the development of waterproof is certainly intended for a pre feasibility analysis. So, just to consider that in terms of the of the way that we are using right certainly for a pre feasibility analysis of this type. We have been using it, like many resources and at least six months just to perform that waterproof can improve that in certainly few minutes just to have a general response. And that's something that we wanted to contribute in this kind of platform that was intention. Carlos I'm going to continue on with you. Folks are wondering, you know, what scale of the basin or the river catchment is waterproof, sort of the most efficient at so maybe you can speak a little bit to like the scale of the data that you all are using. Yeah, well, that's a good question. I mentioned it. We use certainly global databases. We try to select the most, the most efficient ones and also the most correct ones for the application that we were trying to develop. But you have many options at the moment in the world to use many different kind of databases, right. Our conclusion at this moment for from some of the exercises that we have developed is that waterproof is better to use in basins that are bigger than 10 square kilometers for a smaller basins. The response is not so accurate to be honest. So that's the, the, the scale that we are looking at. Thank you. 10 square kilometers could be a good sense for for the system. And yeah, well, actually, something that is also important is again to mention that the scope is only at the previous ability level. One to replace any tail analysis with the system is used to explore the potential of the system of the nature based solutions in your watershed. But yeah, it's not to ensure a number in terms of the of the analysis that you are doing. So after this, if the previous ability looks good, you can continue with the feasibility and design process where you can find a very much more detailed information, mainly local in this kind of analysis. Along those same lines cause folks are wondering if there is certain, you know, are there certain regions where you know data or information is potentially better more complete. And folks are particularly wondering about the main region. Yeah, well, in that case, it depends on the data source, right, for example, for climate, we are using the world clean database, global database. And certainly there are some areas that from this database, you can find better information than others, because from this database, the from this database, they had access for more accurate stations or gauges. Right. So, the answer is that, in general, for the entire world we have an acceptable representation. The intention to incorporate, for example, the sensitivity analysis and the coherence parametric scan was to recognize if for some regions with the response of the models are not so accurate. And certainly, for example, in some regions in Asia and in Africa, we can have like not so good responses, but it's still acceptable for this kind of analysis. So, at the pre feasibility level, we believe that the response is acceptable. For all the world we test the system in all the regions in the world and all the continents and may also all the countries. So we found that at the pre feasibility scale, the response is acceptable. Great, thanks Carlos. This next one is for you and it's about the effectiveness of nbs and achieving kind of nutrient or sediment reduction from effluence entering the river. Yeah, we looked at globally the evidence around nature based solutions this is actually where I think nature based solutions perform the best is in removal of pollutants that are running across the landscape including nutrients, which, which often come from agricultural fields. So a lot of that on field nature based solution activities, which could be, you know, changing how you're, how you're applying fertilizer or adding cover crops or other kinds of on field activities, or edge of fields nature based solutions, such as putting strawberries, ditches or other kinds of vegetative buffers on the edge of fields, or it as well as the nature based reason that could be implemented between fields and, and the water body such as riparian vegetation all of those nature based solutions to have a pretty effective removal efficiency of nutrients. And so, in terms of waterproof, that is, you know, water quality the removal of pollutants that are running off the landscape is something that we model in waterproof and, and can calculate the ROI for for that benefit of the platform. Great. Thanks, Carrie. I'm going to quickly answer this, this last question around available data to the feasibility study. They're specifically asking about financial data and whether or not there is adequate information to be able to do that. And so there is but just not with waterproof so in order to do a feasibility analysis you really want to develop as bespoke of a model as you go to your specific basin using data and information that your stakeholders who will be investing in that location actually care about and trust on their own. And so, waterproof will, I don't want to say never Carlos but I'm going to venture and say, you know it's not really designed for that so it's going to be able to provide that level of really in depth information unless global data sets get a lot better and a lot more specific. And still you would need to use kind of financial values and parameters that your stakeholders really care about so it's best to use product waterproof is that indicative kind of first look at the basin to say is this even a good idea to invest my time energy and money into that and then move on to develop something a little bit more bespoke kind of hand in hand with your stakeholders who are the most interested in either investing in or receiving benefits from that watershed investment program Carlos curry anything to add to that. And from my side, just to add that. Yeah, I mean for feasibility and design, our recommendation is to have local information right is is really important because the decision that you're going to make with that is important and you need like their local representation and conditions and in some in many countries you can find very good detailed information at the local level that you can incorporate, you can certainly follow like the technical framework where that we have developed for waterproof to evaluate the potential benefits in terms of financial components. But, yeah, it is, it is a difference. There is a difference between the information that you can have at the global scale at this moment, and the local information that you can have probably in a couple of years or in a decade. We can find a very specific information and with very good resolution for global databases, but at this moment we still have this limitation in terms of the quality and the characteristics of the of the global scale databases that we are using. All right, well that concludes our Q&A section I'm going to quickly preview some upcoming learning opportunities from IWA. So there's two more online events cause can you move to the next slide when you have a moment. There's two more online events around safely managing sanitation and then a YWP get together. I mean you can learn more about those online events at the, yes, thank you so much you can learn more about those events at the IWA website. Next slide. We mentioned this very briefly in the chat, but we will be offering a virtual course for waterproof for those who are interested in learning more about the tool and applying it in their context. It will be held over three weeks, June 15th of July 6 and participants should expect to spend about two hours a week on the course itself. And then importantly at the very end July 4th of the 6th, three tutors will be able to provide kind of online support and kind of one on one sessions to kind of walk you through and tighten up that case study for your particular basin. So these are the folks who will be joining you on that ROI journey. And these are the folks that have joined Carlos in developing the tool there sort of the mastermind behind waterproof. If you have any questions I would encourage you to go to the website and basically there's a chat function where you can reach out and ask some questions in the interim. All right, this is essentially just an overview of waterproof and what Carlos has gone through. Again, it has the general concepts of nature-based solutions and their importance in water security. We've gone through a mathematical modeling overview using videos and invest the cost of financial components and then of course the waterproof features Carlos give a really great overview of that tool online. Carlos, anything you'd like to add? Yeah, well just to add that the course includes reading materials, videos and practical exercises in waterproof. So everyone is super invited to be part of this first cycle of training with the virtual course. If you want to take the course, you must send before June 14 an email to waterproof at tnc.org with the subject registration for waterproof online course. Simply indicating your name, we will generate the user to enter the course. Again, it is an opportunity to learn more about water security and nature-based solutions and waterproofs so everyone is cordially invited to take the virtual course. Carlos, can you mention one more time for folks what they should email and the subject line? Yes, it is well it is there in the slide it is waterproof at tnc.org and you should include in the subject something like registration for waterproof online course and simply in the body of the email just indicate your name. We will be in charge to organize all the things. Great, thank you Carlos. Next slide. And then last but certainly not least, if you want to join the IWA network of water professionals, you can do so at iwa-connect.org. If you join before the 31st of December 2023, then you can use this 20% discount code Web 23 recruit. Thank you all for your time today. They will be in touch with the recordings and all of the resources that were shared during this webinar. Thank you very much for your engaging questions and thank you to Carlos and Kari for their wonderful presentations. I hope everyone has a wonderful evening day wherever you are.